Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Luke 5:38

"But new wine must be put into fresh wine-skins." — Luke 5:38 (ASV)

The second illustration suggests that Jesus’ teaching is like fermenting wine, wine that seems to have almost inherent vigor and cannot be contained within an old rigid system, just as such wine cannot be contained in old wineskins that have lost elasticity. Jesus concludes by emphasizing that people tend to want the old and to reject the new, assuming (wrongly in this case) that the old is better.